An Unchanging Blue

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the German by Mark Terrill. Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's radical poetics was unique in postwar German literature. His strong affiliation with the New American Poetry provided a reverse-angle, cross-cultural perspective on one of the liveliest epochs in American letters, with a decisively German slant. His permanent confrontation with the postwar German literary establishment and his envelope-pushing experiments with language, syntax, and semantics led him further and further away from the literary scene. His confrontational nature and volatile personality were feared at readings, and together with his huge creative output and his early death, earned him a reputation as the "James Dean of poetry," a true enfant terrible of contemporary letters. AN UNCHANGING BLUE spans the poetic career of the poet described by Heiner Müller as "Maybe the only genius in the postwar literature of West Germany." AN UNCHANGING BLUE provides a generous sampling of translations (with German originals) taken from ten collections of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's poetry published between 1962 and 1975. An extensive introduction by Mark Terrill contextualizes Brinkmann's place in postwar German literature.

Rolf Dieter Brinkmann was born in Vechta, Germany, in 1940, in the midst of World War II, and died in 1975, in London, England, after being struck by a hit-and-run driver. During his lifetime, Brinkmann published nine poetry collections, four short story collections, several radio plays, and a highly acclaimed novel. He also edited and translated two important German-language anthologies of contemporary American poetry (primarily Beat and New York School, for which Brinkmann had a particular affinity), and translated Frank O'Hara's LUNCH POEMS into German, as well as a collection of poems by Ted Berrigan, entitled Guillaume Apollinaire ist Tot. In May, 1975, just a few weeks after his death, Brinkmann's seminal, parameter- expanding poetry collection Westwärts 1 & 2 appeared, which was posthumously awarded the prestigious Petrarca Prize.